What are multilingual education theories?(3)

9. Continuum of Biliteracy (Hornberger)

• Key Idea: Multilingual education operates across a spectrum of proficiency levels, linguistic contexts, and literacy practices.
• Implications:
  • Recognize that learners may develop literacy skills at different rates in each language.
  • Create opportunities for students to use their multiple languages across a variety of contexts (home, school, community).

10. Plurilingual Competence

• Key Idea: Learners develop a flexible competence that enables them to communicate across multiple languages, even without full proficiency in all.
• Implications:
  • Focus on functional communication skills rather than striving for native-like fluency in each language.
  • Encourage strategic use of languages (e.g., borrowing words, code-switching) to achieve communicative goals.

11. Functional Multilingual Learning

• Key Idea: Different languages are used for specific purposes or subjects in multilingual education (e.g., teaching science in one language and history in another).
• Implications:
  • Assign languages to subjects or contexts to maintain functional multilingualism.
  • Ensure balanced use of all target languages in academic and social activities.

12. Critical Multilingual Education

• Key Idea: Multilingual education should empower learners to challenge societal inequalities and affirm their linguistic and cultural identities.
• Implications:
  • Use teaching materials that reflect students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
  • Foster critical thinking about language, identity, and power dynamics in society.

(To be continued)